Breaking the Tyranny of the Urgent
Timberline, Mount Hood, Oregon
Certain activities in our lives provide massive, outsize benefits compared to the myriad other ways that we spend our time. These activities almost immediately make us feel happy, healthy, and at peace with the world around us. Examples include (but are not limited to) going outside and being active every single day, preparing and eating healthy meals, journaling, meditating, stretching and foam rolling, spending time with people you care about, learning new things, and fantastic sex.
(Not sure what these activities are for you? Take some time to think about your values.)
Yet how often do we know in our heart of hearts that certain habits and routines benefit us, and then still skip over these very same things and spend our time doing something else entirely?
Many times when we take a pass on our healthy routines and choose something else instead, we almost immediately feel the negative mental and emotional effects, if not even the physical effects as well. So why do we do this? Why do we skip over the things we know radically improve our lives for activities that just simply, don't?
The constant pressure of the urgent demands on our time is one primary reason.
Every single day there are urgent matters that tyrannically demand our attention, that seemingly mandate that we must deal with them RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Sometimes, these demands truly are urgent. If, for example, you're in a medical profession, you might be urgently called upon to save a life if. Other times, a building might be burning down around you. I hate to break it to you, but that's pretty damn urgent.
But most often, the things that seem urgent are not truly urgent when you take a step back and look at them:
The boss wants you to write up a report for a board meeting STAT... but it never gets looked at, not even once.
There's a sale on kombucha at Trader Joe's, and you know you gotta git dat kombucha fix.
Oops, you're 500 miles past due, and the car needs an oil change.
The kids just have to get to soccer practice, piano lessens, and youth group... not on time, but five minutes early... never mind the mad rushing around to get them there.
We take these things that seem urgent and then elevate them to prominence over the healthy habits in our lives that we know provide huge benefits, but that never seem quite urgent enough to take priority.
In times like these, we need to turn to Eisenhower's decision matrix to get our priorities straight:
When you're faced with these various conflicts, problems, questions, projects, and demands on your time, take a minute to determine where on the matrix each item falls.
The problem with our healthy habits is that they are important, but they're not really all that urgent (the upper right box in the matrix). And so, the urgent things seem to take precedence. As you can see, the matrix tells you to do the "urgent and important" things now and decide when in the future you'll do the "not urgent and important" things (read: healthy habits).
One big problem with the list of bullet point examples above is that they all seem urgent, but they're actually not important. This is key. Just because somebody else tells you they're important doesn't mean a god damned. You can take a few moments to think critically about them and determine what is and is not actually important.
Moreover, if these so-called urgent things aren't important, well then how urgent are they, really? If you're 500 miles over on your oil change, do you need to take care of it right now, or can it wait until tomorrow? We often tend to unnecessarily elevate things in our mental urgency calculus to make them much more urgent than they actually are. Worse yet, so do the people we have in authority over us... think of the urgent report for the boss that never gets read.
Breaking the Tyranny of the Urgent
It's no wonder that millions of Americans feel out of control of their own lives. So many people feel like they can't control how they choose to spend the vast majority of their time day in and day out, year in and year out. If we bow to the tyrannical mandates of the urgent and unimportant things in our lives, or the supposedly urgent things that aren't actually urgent at all, of course we won't have time for ourselves. Of course we won't have time for our healthy habits. When we bow to the tyranny of the urgent, we're constantly running on someone else's hamster wheel, dodging the crack of the overlord's whip.
But if we can break free from the dictator's power, we can regain our autonomy and control over our own lives.
Sure, sometimes things actually are urgent and important—sometimes we have to grab our kids and run out of the burning building. But if we take the time to analyze our lives, we'll find that most of the bull shit can simply be cut away, leaving us with the freedom to pursue the things that truly matter to us.
Note: A Google Search revealed that there's a book by nearly the same title ("The Tyranny of the Urgent"), which means I had probably heard this term elsewhere before penning this piece. I have not read that book (yet).
Even More Crucial Tactics
Check out the other installments in the Crucial Tactics series here:
